Thank you, Mr. Chair.
This speaks as well to the issue of fairness and the issue of growing income inequality and the importance that we as legislators consider the challenges and the plight faced by low-income Canadians, the people we ought to be most concerned about.
Theoretically, pension income splitting is something that sounds pretty innocuous, except when we consider there is a significant tax expenditure through pension income splitting and when we really consider who benefits from pension income splitting. We have been informed by witnesses, numerous studies, and experts in the area of retirement income and pension policy that the disproportionate benefit for income splitting in general goes to people with higher income.
I think it's important. We all represent people from all walks of life, and in the House of Commons we bring our own experiences as well as those of a lot of the people we meet with on Saturdays in our constituency offices across Canada and during break weeks. The people coming to see us on issues are people who are struggling, people who face real challenges.
We're struggling with budget deficits. The minister recently announced that he was going to miss another target and that the budget wouldn't be balanced until 2016-17, but now the Prime Minister has subsequently announced that the minister was wrong and we would be balanced before the next election. In any case, my point is that we do live in a period....
I have heard Mr. Van Kesteren sometimes say there are no free lunches, usually after members of Parliament have just had one here, but the reality is that tax revenues and the fiscal situation today are such that any decision that involves a tax expenditure has to be taken very seriously.
While I understand on the surface why pension income splitting would be supported overwhelmingly by tax planners, you have to ask yourself why. Who do tax planners work for? Typically the people hiring tax planners are people who make a fair bit of money, so it's not surprising that tax planners ought to support pension income splitting. What we should be looking out for at this committee are the people who can't afford to hire tax planners, the people who can't necessarily afford to hire professional accountants, the people who shuffle down to H and R Block and do their best to get their tax returns in but don't really have the resources to hire the sophisticated financial and tax advisory services that are hired by the well-paid people who tell us that pension income splitting is good. Pension income splitting is good for their clients.
The problem with this, Mr. Chair, is that it does involve reallocation of money from other areas. We heard from Ms. Glover, Ms. McLeod, Mr. Adler, and witnesses who called for tax reform. We have not had significant study of our personal tax system in Canada since the Carter commission changes of 1971.
Some people advocating tax reform were advocating it for building a fairer tax system and addressing some of the inequities and closing some of the loopholes and addressing those issues. Some others approached it from the perspective of competitiveness, but the reality is, Mr. Chair, at a time when we face significant budget deficits and significant challenges in balancing the books and also at time of rising poverty and rising income inequality, I question the judgment of the government and the decision of the government to go forward with pension income splitting. I just think there are better ways we can help low-income seniors.
Ironically, this government wants to take people on old age security and—
I'm sorry, I was just getting started, Mr. Chair.